A decade after Hurricane Katrina, #BlackLivesMatter may be trending, but many homes in the historically black, low-income areas of New Orleans still haven’t been rebuilt.

Gary Rivlin’s Katrina: After the Flood (Simon & Schuster, 2015) is as raw as the title. Rivlin arrived in Louisiana right after the hurricane hit to report for the New York Times and has been writing about the area ever since. Katrina carries you from the days before the disaster through an aftermath so tumultuous and chaotic you can scarcely fathom it happening in a developed country. Rivlin’s careful storytelling won’t let us escape, however, as he confronts us with testimonials from streets that remain uninhabited 10 years later.

These stories of people trying to return home—or even just fix their home—highlight the disconnect between the political landscape, both local and national, during the recovery period and the grassroots efforts on the ground. While FEMA fumbles for trailers and New Orleans struggles to restore electricity and water, neighborhoods provide DIY disaster relief. A storefront becomes a makeshift first-aid center where people can get insulin and have their wounds dressed. The charity Common Ground sets up a relief center in the Upper Ninth Ward where people can check out tools and get food. The resilience ascribed to the residents of NOLA after Katrina didn’t end when they returned to the city; that’s when it really came into play.

This article appeared as "After the Flood" in the November/December 2015 print edition of Sierra.